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On paper, we have ourselves a bit of a mismatch here, and Fangraphs’ odds gives the Indians a 70% chance to win today’s game. Corey Kluber’s K rate is down slightly from last year’s memorably great year, but he’s been pretty much the same guy: brilliant control, a slurve-of-death breaking ball that no one can hit, and excellent durability. There’s a reason he’s compared to a robot, after all. This year, he’s given up 4 HRs already, but thanks to an improved (!) strand rate, he’s again the ace of one of the best staffs in baseball.

In many ways, Kluber embodies the way the game and its best teams have developed. His K rate moved sharply higher since 2012, and he’s given up steadily fewer base hits. His BABIP in his first half-year with Cleveland was .342; it’s declined 6 straight years, and now sits at just over .200. That’s meant that one of the only ways to score on him is to hit a home run,* which is kind of like the game of baseball writ large in 2018. Finally, there’s his unassuming backstory – a fair-to-middling starter in the San Diego system, and then a live arm with serious control problems in the Cleveland system. Corey Kluber looked for all the world like a AAA pitcher, and then, suddenly, he was the Klubot, sentient robot and destroyer of line-ups. I’ve written a lot about this, but while there’ve always been overlooked players who come out of nowhere and succeed, my sense is that many were Mike Piazza types, guys who never got much of a look from scouts, but produced at every step along the way. What seems new, or maybe the scale of it is new, is that teams are succeeding in radically transforming what had once been thought to be a player’s innate ability level. They’re not maximizing ability, they’re fundamentally changing it. Jose Altuve’s perhaps the best example for hitters, but I kind of think Kluber is that kind of where-did-this-come-from case for pitchers.

The M’s have had some issues with the players that’ve successfully navigated the route from DL to rehab to the active roster. Ben Gamel’s season hasn’t quite gotten on track, and Nelson Cruz was slumping a bit after his DL stint. Erasmo Ramirez is another guy who looked a little…rusty? Off?… in his first start back. That needs to change, and hopefully tonight’s the beginning of a run of quality starts. Clearly, the M’s bullpen can use it – they faltered in yesterday’s game before being rescued by Kyle Seager and then their own closer, Edwin Diaz, who’s been untouchable. But the set-up guys have been hot and cold, which, I suppose, is sort of the nature of the beast. Dan Altavilla always seems like a slight adjustment from making the leap, and it seems like Nick Vincent may be all out of magic pixie dust, but at least Juan Nicasio is looking like an asset.

I think there are a few sabermetric ideas that are both true and that took hold in the game that’ve had deleterious side effects. An example is the importance of the defensive spectrum, and that a SS who hits 25 HRs is perhaps more valuable than a 1B who hits 28. We all get this now, and thus it’s rare that baseball writers will ignore a SS having an amazing year in order to hand the MVP to whoever hit the most HRs/had the most RBIs. The offensive floor for 1B is, and should be, higher than that for SS or CFs or Cs. We all get that, but it seems like baseball’s now swung so far the other way, and has decided there’s no such thing as a first base prospect. The best example of this was Paul Goldschmidt, who destroyed the minors all the way up the chain, and had talent evaluators just sort of shrug their shoulders. Cody Bellinger was a top 100 prospect, but more towards the back end of it, and *instantly* became an offensive force as soon as he made contact with big league pitching.

I say all of this not, sadly, because the M’s have an unfairly overlooked 1B prospect, but because the acquisition of Ryon Healy was so atypical. Here was a team that saw an underrated player in precisely the sort of guy who’d been OVERrated a generation before: a low OBP slugging 1B. Had the pendulum again swung too far? Is he more valuable than his surface numbers might suggest? I’m…I’m betting not, but even if the FO thinks there’s something there, Servais clearly doesn’t, as he’s had him batting 9th for a few games now. Emilio Pagan is not lighting it up, and it’s ultimately a minor deal, but it’s one I’m still quite confused about. I’d love to understand it better, and I’d love for Healy to demonstrate some previously hidden level of plate discipline and consistency.

Starters in the minors tonight include Casey Lawrence for Tacoma, Nathan Bannister for Arkansas, Ljay Newsome in Modesto, and Raymond Kerr for Clinton. The big story of last night in the M’s system was the debut of Jayson Werth, who doubled in 4 ABs for Tacoma in their 4-3 loss to Fresno.

* – Corey Kluber has allowed 8 runs on the year, and given up 4 HRs, so half of all of the runs he’s allowed have come from HRs (and technically, he’s given up 2 2-R HRs, so it’s more like 6 of the 8), which seems comically high. But hey, it’s 2018, and sample sizes are still small, so you can see this sort of thing around the league. Jakob Junis has given up 8 dingers on the year, most in MLB, but only allowed 12 total runs. Justin Verlander’s given up 4 HRs and only 7 total runs. But most extreme is the A’s Sean Manaea, who’s given up just 5 total runs on the year…and 4 HRs.

After yet another series win, the M’s head into Cleveland with a bit of confidence. They’ve won every series save one, and they’ve already beaten Cleveland 2 of 3 to open the season. For most of the first month, Cleveland’s offense was undetectable. Their pitching was clear, and still amazing, but they were having scoring, and so they languished below .500 for a while. They’re up at 13-9 now, a reflection, in part, on the first stirrings of life from that offense, and the weakening of the almost comical BABIP woes they had. To be clear: they still have woes, and their offense is still something of an anchor on another historically good staff, but it’s a weakness they can work with. Sort by BABIP and the Indians are still dead last, and last by a mile; the gap between the Indians in 30th and the Orioles in 29th is the same as the gap between the Orioles and the White Sox in 12th. They’re dealing with slow starts from everyone from Yonder Alonso to Francisco Lindor to Edwin Encarnacion to Jason Kipnis (whose slump is particularly virulent), but they still lead the Central.

Part of that has to do with the relative weakness of the Central, but a part of it is their brilliant pitching staff. The Indians are famous for missing bats, and they’re still doing that. But with guys like Trevor Bauer and today’s starter, Mike Clevinger, the rotation behind Corey Kluber seemed to allow too many walks. They seem to have fixed that; they’re now tied with the A’s for the lowest walk rate in baseball. Meanwhile, Clevinger’s the poster boy for improved contact management. I’m always a bit hesitant to ascribe skill to this, but he was middle of the pack in terms of his contact-allowed last year, and is now clearly in the top echelon, with a low average exit velocity and low velocities for fly balls/line drives. That’s helped the staff make up for the loss of the injured Danny Salazar, and the expected regression from Corey Kluber, who pitched most of the second half of 2017 on a historically great run.

Clevinger’s always been a four pitch guy, with a fastball around 93-94, a good change-up, and then a slider and curve. The righties see a bunch of sliders, while the lefties get the change. Add it up, and he’s essentially the same guy against both – he has essentially no platoon splits. Even by FIP, there’s essentially no change at all. The M’s need to focus on putting out their best line-up, and not tailoring it to Clevinger’s weaknesses….and that’s what they can now do, as Ryon Healy’s been activated from the DL, while the M’s optioned Dan Vogelbach to AAA.

That move, like the Heredia option, removes the ability (temptation?) to platoon, as the M’s now don’t have a lefty behind the right-handed Healy, just like they don’t have a righty behind their two lefty OFs, Ichiro and Ben Gamel. They sent Heredia down because they were facing a bunch of righties in a row, but curiously, that reasoning didn’t come up today. Instead, they’re giving the job over to Healy (which, admittedly, was the original plan), and instructing him he needs to produce to keep it. Vogelbach’s struggles probably made the decision easier, too.

Paxton’s been giving up a bit more hard contact this year, as reflected in his slightly elevated HR rate and the fact he’s given up 11 extra-base hits in 25 2/3 IP. He’s alternated between really good outings, and some forgettable ones, and of course, one of those not-so-hot games came against this line-up in Seattle. This’d be a good time for an ace-level start.

Happy Felix Day. It’s always a little happier when the M’s are coming off of a great pitching performance, and are not looking to Felix to staunch some bleeding. Yesterday’s start from Marco Gonzales – especially on the heels of a successful game 5 days earlier – couldn’t have come at a better time. After a disastrous start from Mike Leake, the M’s team numbers were atrocious, and with a tired bullpen, a short start yesterday could’ve snowballed on the M’s. Frankly, short starts are pretty much the norm from Gonzales since the trade, as he’s struggled the 2nd and 3rd time through a line-up. Instead, Marco mixed pitches masterfully, worked out of a first-inning jam, and then pretty much dominated an overmatched White Sox line-up.

Against Houston on the 19th, Gonzales tried to go away from the scouting report on him, and relied heavily on his curve ball, throwing it more than any of his other pitches. Yesterday, against a more free-swinging, fastball-hunting club, he went back to the change, throwing it 28 times against 31 sinkers. Mixing pitches and tailoring the mix to a specific line-up is great, but traditionally, it hasn’t been enough for Gonzales. As great as his change-up *looks*, visually, it’s produced mediocre results for years. He’s needed something to keep right-handers honest, and as I’ve talked about a bit, he needs a pitch that comes between his fastball and change, which have had dangerously distinct release points. Gonzales’ cutter seems to have transformed him, and it’s a pitch that right-handers can’t seem to figure out.

Platoon splits have always been a problem for Gonzales, going back to his Cardinals days. Dropping his arm angle, which mostly seems to have happened before he got to Seattle (though it’s dropped a tiny bit this year), shouldn’t really help with that – combined with a new sinker, that should *exacerbate* his splits, not solve them. But that’s why the cutter’s so interesting: his new arm angle and new sinker produce a lot of arm-side run. His change-up always had that, but with the new angle, it’s got even more – often over 10″. Years ago, his old slider didn’t have the bite you’d want, and so it still had minimal armside run, not true glove side movement. His cutter spins enough that it can get to 0 or even an inch or two glove side despite being thrown harder than his old slider. From the new angle, at that speed, that’s an intriguing pitch – it’d be more slider-y than his old slider if it wasn’t thrown with fastball velocity. Anyway, that horizontal movement gives him tremendous separation between sinker/fastball and the cutter, and since it’s thrown from a release point in between his change and fastball. If you’re a righty and you read change-up on it, the cutter’s speed, while unremarkable in a vacuum, will mess up your timing. If you’re swinging at a pitch you expect to move a foot armside that then doesn’t, even if you DO hit it, you’re likely to need a new bat.

Gonzales is still learning, and we need to seem him do this consistently, but these last two starts have been revelatory. I’d assumed that even a really good version of Gonzales wouldn’t include a lot of missed bats. I’m not so sure about that anymore.

Today, the M’s face veteran James Shields. Shields was something of a canary in the coal mine for the home run explosion, as he got destroyed by the long ball back in 2015, just before the entire league did in 2016. Shields came up with the Rays as a fastball/change-up guy, and his change was his outpitch for a decade. Until last year. Perhaps tired of seeing its results drop, or tired of batters looking for it, because hey, it’s James Shields’ outpitch, he started throwing it much, much less last year. It’s now his fourth pitch by usage, behind his fastball, cutter, and especially his curveball. His curve has maybe been overlooked a bit, as it’s been a solid pitch for years. The cutter *should* be good – it’s got slider-like movement, and while BrooksBaseball lists a cutter and a slider, they certainly look like one pitch to me. It’s thrown a bit softer than Gonzales’ cutter, but it’s got that same wide gap in horizontal movement that Marco’s developed. The problem is, batters see it really well. Since the start of last year, he’s thrown it over 500 times, and batters are slugging .564 on it. It’s not the cause of his suddenly concerning platoon splits (this is a good day for the M’s lefties), but it’s not helping solve that problem.

I watched the end of the Modesto Nuts 6-0 loss to Inland Empire, and while it wasn’t good to see them get shut out yet again by the Angels affiliate, Wyatt Mills looked great in the 9th. His funky sidearm angle produced tons of armside run on his fastball, and that fastball got as high as 94. As a senior-sign who took a massive discount when he signed his contract, I guess I kind of assumed he’d top out as org depth. It doesn’t look like it at this point. 91-94 isn’t quite Carson Smith-level velocity, but I was struck by just how much the arsenal *looked* like Smith’s. It’s been a solid start for Mills, and he’s definitely one to watch.

I heard national baseball scribe Jeff Passan on Brock and Salk this morning talking about the over-the-top anger about the M’s optioning Guillermo Heredia in order to keep Ichiro. I’m paraphrasing here, but Passan’s point was that this anger isn’t really related to the case at hand – the delta in performance over a 10-20 day period between two non-starting OFs – but had been building up for some time, and this was just an excuse to let it out.

I think this is clearly true, and while Heredia’s had a great start, he wasn’t going to play a whole lot over the next couple of series. He could add value as a defensive replacement or pinch hitter (which he showed in Arlington), but his contributions would be pretty marginal. Even if you believe Ichiro is 100% cooked as a big league player, the same is true of Ichiro’s negative contributions; he’s not going to get a chance to do serious damage. This is a pretty meaningless move in the abstraact. What it does, and what gets people fired up, is that it highlights that the M’s aren’t yet in a position to care about marginal differences. And this goes against what the M’s FO has been arguing: that the M’s are in the thick of a tough competition for a wild card spot.

Despite their good start, the M’s don’t seem to match up well with the Angels and Yankees, though of course they’ve yet to play either. The Astros just demonstrated that they’re in another class. When I first heard about the move, it seemed like either the result of a handshake agreement they’d made with Ichiro or a directive from ownership to keep a beloved player on the roster, and neither of those things was aligned with the goal of putting the best possible roster on the field. Now, though, I’m a bit more ambivalent. I’d argue, and have argued, that the M’s aren’t quite a playoff team, and the reason for THAT has essentially nothing to do with their 4th outfielder. What I want is for the M’s to make decisions about the 4th OF really, really hard. I want the M’s to be in a position where every 10th of a win might matter, and every decision – from the manager, the general manager, and ownership – feels critical. Until that happens, decisions can and probably should involve factors other than how to squeeze every last possible fractional improvement out of the 40-man roster.

So if the M’s problem isn’t with the OF, where are they falling short? Uh, no points for correct guesses here, it’s the pitching staff. M’s pitchers enter today’s game with an ERA of 5.14 and a FIP of 4.81, good for a fWAR of exactly nothing. They have put up a replacement-level month or so by fielding-independent measures, and despite a good start in BABIP, they’re now even worse than that by ERA/RA-9. The reason for *that* is another familiar one, if you’ve read this blog at all for the past few years: home runs. The M’s currently sport a HR/9 of 1.52, second-worst in the game behind the Reds who are hurtling towards a historically bad record at this point. And why is THAT? Why are the M’s so bad at HR prevention, worse than teams like the White Sox who have an abysmal pitching staff AND who play in a HR-friendly park? Hector Santiago, that’s why.

Ok, that’s a bit hyperbolic. Let’s back up. In late 2011, Jerry Dipoto took over as GM of the Angels. The club finished 2nd in the AL West, and had just seen Mike Trout’s debut. Their pitching staff was solid thanks to the combination of Dan Haren (whom Dipoto had traded to Anaheim as interim GM of Arizona) and Jered Weaver. The next year, Weaver was great, and they were supplemented with CJ Wilson and Albert Pujols, two of the biggest free agents on the market. That, and Trout’s mind-blowing rookie season, pushed their win total up to 89 – but they finished 3rd in the division and missed the playoffs, even after the deadline acquisition of Zack Greinke. Haren regressed along with the bullpen, and suddenly the Angels’ staff ranked 23rd by fWAR, or 19th by RA9-based WAR. Their line-up was now far and away the best in the game, but their pitching staff held them back. They’d committed millions in back-loaded deals to Pujols and others, and so ideally, the improvements on the mound would come cheaply.

If there was any doubt about the importance of improving the staff, it was erased in 2013, as the pitchers regressed further and even the line-up took a step back. Still, 2013 was another step in Dipoto’s long game. In 2011, the Angels ranked 9th in team ground ball rate. In 2012, Dipoto’s first year at the helm, they fell to 20th. In 2013, they dipped further to 27th. And then, in that off-season, the Angels went all-in on their plan, swapping free-swinging 1B Mark Trumbo for Tyler Skaggs and today’s starter, Hector Santiago.

Santiago had been a decent starter for the White Sox, putting up OK runs-allowed numbers that FIP never bought into. As an extreme fly-ball guy, Santiago gave up too many HRs for FIP’s liking, even if his overall ERA was consistently under 4. If that sounds familiar, this was essentially Jered Weaver’s MO, though of course Weaver was a bit better at it. Santiago was no Weaver, but then, he was cheap and undervalued. In 2014, with Santiago in the fold, the Angels GB% fell yet again, and with it went the club’s BABIP-allowed. Led by young phenom Garrett Richards and bearded-opposite-of-phenom Matt Shoemaker, the Angels missed plenty of bats to go along with their low BABIP, and lo and behold, Jerry Dipoto had constructed a good pitching staff with guys like Santiago and Shoemaker, while CJ Wilson -expensive GB% pitcher- struggled. The club won 98 games, most in the majors, and finally had a complete team to build around Mike Trout. In 2015, the Angels had the lowest GB% in the game.

I get why Dipoto loves this plan. Hell, it *worked* once, and that’s a pretty good sign. The only problem is that 2014 is gone, and the game looks vastly different now. In 2014, one AL team hit a *total* of 95 HRs. They won the pennant. Only one team in the game hit over 200. Last year, 17 teams hit 200 dingers, including the M’s. The team with the fewest HRs in the league wasn’t a pennant-contender, but one of the worst teams in the league. The two teams with the lowest GB% rates, the Mariners and Tigers, weren’t benefitting from undervalued arms, they were hemorrhaging runs all year (injuries and the end of a competitive window played a role, too). The Angels were still among the league leaders in fly balls, and they too were paying a high price in terms of HRs-allowed; their BABIP was better than average, but it didn’t matter any more.

I get the sense that Jerry’s never quite gotten over the euphoria of 2014, of Hector Santiago and FIP-defying ERAs. Of Matt Shoemaker being a better value (and just a better pitcher) than CJ Wilson. I can’t imagine how it feels when a long process starts to bear spectacular fruit; the Angels player development staff must’ve been high-fiving each other non stop as Trout laid waste to the game, and then Dipoto cracked the code on pitching. It seemed so sustainable. It wasn’t, and unless something pretty radical changes, the M’s can’t Hector Santiago their way to success. Hell, Santiago himself has become a journeyman, and is making his first start of the year after being relegated to the Sox (bad) bullpen. I lament this state of affairs, but I’m sympathetic, too. I don’t think Dipoto was stupid to follow the same path back in 2016. I’m getting worried that the M’s aren’t making more adjustments, though.

Sounds like Kyle Lewis is in extended spring training , and may get to a full-season MiLB club next month.
Speaking of extended, Eric Longenhagen reported that the M’s have been pissing off other clubs by running out of pitchers in the not-really-reported on/not official extended spring training “league” and having to stop games before they’ve concluded.
One person who’s graduated from extended to a full-season roster? Jayson Werth, who’s just been added to the Rainiers roster along with Roenis Elias. Matt Hague and Josh Smith have been released.

What could possibly take away from the M’s winning a road series against a divisional rival?

The M’s spent yesterday trying to explain that optioning Guillermo Heredia to AAA while keeping left-handed Ichiro backing up left-handed Ben Gamel was made for baseball reasons. Many M’sfans, and many M’s beat writers, disagreed, saying instead that the move was made to appease ownership’s desire to hold on to a franchise icon, on-field results be damned. At this stage in their respective careers, there’s essentially no getting around the fact that Heredia is a better ballplayer than Ichiro. I say that as an unabashed Ichiro fanboy, the kind of person that, if the motives attributed to ownership are true, would be the target market for this nostalgic-if-self-defeating move. Ichiro’s power, always limited, is all but gone, and you’re left hoping for singles.

Ichiro has clearly changed since he was traded, but so has Safeco Field. The alleys that once helped turn line drives into extra base hits have been chopped down across the board, and it’s now much more of an all-or-nothing park: hit it over the fence, or suffer. Ichiro is not a guy who does a whole lot of the former, and is now doing more of the latter than any of us are comfortable with. This log jam was coming, and the result illustrates how difficult it can be to juggle position player battles now that pitchers make up so much of the roster – Scott Servais seemed to indicate they may have sent a pitcher down when Erasmo Ramirez was recalled, but decided not to when James Paxton had a short start; this suggests that Heredia’s active roster spot could’ve been saved by Paxton going a few more IPs, or a few balls in play getting converted to outs, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. But of course *all* of this is ridiculous. Whatever the reason, the M’s have now made their team a bit worse: they’ve reduced platoon advantages on the bench, and the club’s defensive ability is lower as a result of banishing a solid glove.

I can imagine Ichiro (and the club) arguing that he hasn’t been given enough of an opportunity to perform, and thus pointing to his small sample performance gap vis a vis Heredia shouldn’t count for much. I can imagine the M’s FO wanting to believe that, but struggling to fully commit. They may have made some sort of commitment to Ichiro when he signed, too; at the very least, I doubt they came out and said that unless X or Y happens, you’ll be released when Ben Gamel is healthy. Whatever they agreed to, the M’s are now in the position of having to defend keeping a former superstar to fans who both love said superstar and also see it as a questionable move. The parallels to 2010 are getting harder to ignore.

What’s also harder to ignore is that the club simply isn’t quite built to compete in the new AL West, and while the Heredia move certainly doesn’t help, keeping Heredia wouldn’t change that sad fact. The M’s have played about as well as any of us could expect, yet find themselves not only behind the juggernaut that is the Houston Astros, but comfortably behind the Angels, too. The M’s have had a better start than Oakland, but they’re going to have to worry about holding off the upstart A’s as well, particularly if they get their starting pitching sorted out.

The M’s are in a soft part of their schedule, with a series kicking off tonight in Chicago. They handled the Texas Rangers, and now get to face the reeling White Sox, whose in-full-swing rebuild is taking perhaps a bit longer than fans looking across town at the Cubs would like. To take full advantage, and to remove protecting the bullpen as an excuse for some self-inflicted wounding, the M’s starting pitchers need to step up. Mike Leake’s been one of the most dependable, but his peripherals have gone crazy this year. Leake was so effective in Seattle last September because he essentially walked nobody – just 2 in 5 starts. He’s walked 10 in his 4 starts this year, and his K rates haven’t increased. Perhaps more bizarrely, Mike Leake – sinkerballing ground ball guy – is now a fly-ball pitcher, with a FB% that’s soared by 16 percentage points in the early going.

Leake has essentially remade himself, with a vastly different pitch mix featuring far fewer sinkers and more cutters, change-ups and a few more curves. Given that, you might expect some differences in batted ball and swing profiles, but they’re simply not what you’d expect. His change and cutter have traditionally been ground ball pitches too, and they remain so. The problem is that his sinker – now 1 MPH slower than last year – isn’t generating grounders anymore. It’s weird. Batters have responded to his blizzard of non-sinkers by swinging much less. They still swing at his sinker, and as usual, they make contact with it. It’s just that it’s now getting elevated. This hasn’t really hurt him; his strand rate is high and his HR rate is normal. He’s logged some good innings for the M’s. It’s just that he looks nothing like the guy who came in last season.

To give themselves more RP depth, the M’s re-acquired lefty Roenis Elias from Boston for a PTBNL or cash. Elias was the throw-in in the Carson Smith/Wade Miley deal that pretty much all parties would like to disavow, though the Sox could still benefit from a healthy Smith. Elias and Boston never clicked, and he pitched just 8 IP total for them in the two years since the trade. He’s largely pitched for Pawtucket, and not terribly well. That said, this was a guy who gave the M’s two very solid seasons as the 5th starter, and gives the M’s some needed depth.

Clinton has won 6 in a row, and lead their division in the MWL; they’ve got the 2nd best record in the 16-team league. Oliver Jaskie faces off with Wisconsin’s Alec Bettinger tonight.

Modesto, on the other end of things, is currently 8th in the 8-team California League. The Nuts are off tonight.

Arkansas is 2nd in their division, and 5th overall in the 10-team Texas League. Chase de Jong leads the Travs against Tulsa tonight.

Tacoma is 2nd in their division, and 7th in the 16-team Pacific Coast League. The Rainiers beat Sacramento 4-1 today in the third battle (already) between Rob Whalen and ex-M’s prospect Tyler Herb. Whalen K’d 9 in 6 1/3 solid innings

I feel like I’ve spent this entire series lavishing praise on the Astros rotation, but you can kind of see why: the M’s have scored 4 runs in 3 games. Now, they face the guy who might just be the *best* starter of the bunch, at least right now. The M’s avoided Justin Verlander this series, but that’s cold comfort now that Charlie Morton of all become is become death, destroyer of worlds.

Morton is 34, and while he’s been in the league a long time, has never tossed more than 172 IP in a season. Injuries played a part, but it was more that he just didn’t quite warrant more innings. In that peak workload year of 2011, he had a sub-4.00 ERA (in the hitting little ice age), but a K/9 of 5.77 and a BB/9 of 4.04. You looked at his line and it screamed overrated or even replacement level. It helped that he threw pretty hard, but it was nothing eye-popping. What saved him was a solid sinker that enabled high ground ball rates, and thus, in the days when the strike zone was exploring new territory to the south, it could be hard to hit HRs off of him. But due to a combination of injury and general mediocrity, that sharpness that allowed him to avoid the center of the plate (even if it meant walking too many) was hard to produce consistently.

Like with Gerrit Cole, things began to change when he left Pittsburgh – Morton signed a cheap deal with Philadelphia and started throwing harder while retaining his elite GB%, but injuries nuked his season after less than 20 IP. The Astros signed him on the basis of an intriguing couple of games, and set their development staff to work on him. Whereas he always had horrible platoon splits before, he now destroys left-handed hitters. Whereas he threw hard in the past, here’s Morton now, at age *34*, with the 4th highest FB velocity of any starter in the game – it’s ahead of Paxton’s, and hell, it’s ahead of Gerrit Cole’s. He closed out the World Series not by design, but because no one on the Dodgers could touch him, so the Astros just left him in there. And now? In 2018, his GB% has spiked again, as has his K%. The average exit velocity against him was below 7 degrees last year, but thus far in 2018, it’s *below zero*. He’s throwing 98 MPH darts that sink and if you somehow hit them, they go for topped ground balls. Right now, Charlie Morton, free agent afterthought, clearly established MLB journeyman, is one of the best pitchers in the game, and that’s backed up by stuff, performance, peripherals, whatever else you want to use.

Not going to lie: this feels a bit unfair. The Astros needed an amazing free agent bargain (Morton) about as much as they needed an amazing trade bargain (Cole). People point to the Astros tanking for years, and how that enabled them to get Carlos Correa with the #1 overall pick, but do you remember how everyone howled that picking Correa was just a way to save money? And how they used those savings in 2012 to sign Lance McCullers to an overslot deal? They’ve done OK with their super-high draft picks, but it has clearly NOT made the difference for them. Not when afterthoughts like Jose Altuve, Collin McHugh, or even Morton are around. They built an amazing system not just with #2 overall draft picks, but by developing a slew of players they could send out across the league for whatever they needed. Hell, sometimes it blew up in their face, as when they sent a chunk of talent to Milwaukee for Carlos Gomez. Josh Hader, who Jeff Sullivan just said is becoming the game’s most valuable reliever, was part of that deal, as was OF Domingo Santana who hit 30 bombs and put up a 3 WAR season. Gomez sucked, but who cares? The Astros moved George Springer over and, after they’d helped him overcome some contact issues, watched as he blossomed into an all-star.

Years ago, I lamented that there was this huge, huge gap between the M’s and the Rangers. Not only was the Rangers roster better, but so was their system and player development, which makes it hard to foresee how you begin to CLOSE the current gap. Chronic injury woes, some front office moves, and the closing of a contention window conspired to close that gap, and that’s nice, I guess. It took about 8 years, but there you go. The problem is that the gap between the M’s and Astros is bigger than that older gap ever was, and it comes at a time when the M’s don’t have 5-8 years to play with. Some M’s fans were angry that the M’s weren’t more serious players in free agency this off-season, and others defend the club, pointing out that there wasn’t much to go after, particularly starting pitching. The Astros turned Charlie Morton – literally, Charlie Morton – into one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. After watching that, I just can’t argue about what the right offer to, I don’t know, Lance Lynn should’ve been.

I’d be fine if the M’s signed a league-average starter; that’d be nifty. But what I want is for the M’s to take some half-formed prospect, or some waiver claim, some guy with the dreaded AAAA label, and turn him into something even the Astros feared. The M’s seemed really high on Marco Gonzales, and their ability not only to keep him healthy, but to tap into hitherto unknown levels of talent. It still could happen. Maybe it’ll happen today. But we’re all still waiting.

The guy Gonzales was traded for, OF Tyler O’Neill, was called up by the St. Louis Cardinals, so that’s just a fabulous bit of context. Sounds like the Cards made a series of changes to his stance and swing, and while he’s still whiff-prone, they’ve enabled him to cut down on pop-ups. He’s hit 18 HRs in less than 50 games in the Cards org, and is slugging over .600 since the deal, so, uh, great for him. Former M’s SP prospect Enyel de los Santos, whom the M’s sent to San Diego for Joaquin Benoit, was moved to Philadelphia just before the year in exchange for SS Freddie Galvis. De los Santos is in AAA and is striking out a bunch of dudes. Ryan Yarbrough is in Tampa pitching as a swing man, and while he’s walking too many (odd for him), he’s getting some experience. I really want to be hopeful about the M’s ability to develop pitching. I want to think that bad luck happens, and that the M’s have their successes with other clubs’ flame-outs just as often as the reverse occurs. I don’t think that today, and thus I’m not all that hopeful today. Marco, buddy, help me be hopeful again.

The Rainiers got a grand slam and 7 RBI from C Chris Herrman in a 14-2 drubbing of Albuquerque. Rob Whalen was sharp over 6 IP. The R’s send Max Povse to the mound tonight, as he tries to put his last start in Sacramento behind him.

Arkansas kicks off a series with the Springfield Cardinals today. Johendi Jiminian takes the mound for the Travs, opposite Conner Greene. Greene was part of the package in the deal that sent Randall Grichuk to Toronto.

Modesto scored 3 in the 9th to edge Stockton 6-5 – and the rally started with 2 outs and no one on base. Danny Garcia started and pitched 6 2/3 IP, while Wyatt Mills picked up the win with a scoreless 9th. With 2 outs, the Nuts got a single, then two walks to load the bases. Evan White then got plunked, which made it 5-4, before Logan Taylor lined a two-run walk-off hit. White added 2 hits, his first 2-hit game of the year, but he’s still searching for that elusive XBH.

Having beaten Dallas Keuchel, former Cy Young winner, the M’s were beaten in turn by future Cy Young candidate, Lance McCullers. Their reward from having split those two games? Facing Gerrit Cole, who’s been utterly dominant thus far.

Perhaps no pitcher in recent memory has moved between two organizations, or at least big league clubs, who have such a clear, obvious Strategy when it comes to pitching. The Pirates, under Ray Searage, famously preached throwing sinkers low in the zone. If you were a journeyman sinkerballer, you might flourish in a system that’s almost mono-maniacally focused on sinkers. But if you were, say, Gerrit Cole, #1 overall pick, blessed with a high-90s four-seam fastball, what would you do? Adjust the system to the player’s strengths, or adjust the player’s strengths to the system? Easy – Pittsburgh instructed Cole to throw a bunch of sinkers, and he did, and when he wasn’t hurt, he was pretty darn effective, capped by a brilliant 2015 in which he racked up 5.5 fWAR. Since then, and with the rise of the HR, Cole regressed a bit, throwing a solid but not outstanding 200 IP last year. As league-wide K rates continued to spike (more on that later), Cole’s stagnated and even dropped a bit.

What would happen when he got to Houston, a team that likes low pitches but loves breaking balls and whiffs even more? Cole is essentially unrecognizable, and, more importantly, unhittable. It’s early, but Cole’s K:BB ratio coming in is 36:4 in just 21 IP. Yes, yes, sure, that’s a tiny sample – but it’s just so out of line with his previous career. Cole has pitched in MLB since 2013, and in that time had exactly two starts with more than 10 Ks – one in 2013, and one in 2014. In three starts this year, he’s put up 11, 11, and 14 strikeouts. This is a new level of performance. The Astros’ approach, paired with Cole’s remarkable arm strength/quickness, has created a monster.

Strikeouts are up throughout the game, but even within that, Cole stands out. It’s rare that starters can get to 14 Ks, because they simply don’t pitch long enough anymore. Shorter starts and more innings shifted to the bullpen (which have grown as a result) in turn push league K rates ever higher, as teams don’t pay a times-through-the-order penalty, and as managers mix and match to get the platoon advantage as much as possible. You see that now, as relievers have thrown about 41% of the innings in the young season – and remember that’s before starting pitching depth has been battered by injury, and before teams have needed to use 5th starters as much. It may go up from here. For context, relievers threw 38.1% of IP last year, 36.7% the year before that, 33.5% in 2014. Right in line with that trend, you’ve got the league K/9 setting a new record every year for the past *10 years*. Given that, it shouldn’t be a shock that the league-wide K rate is up yet again, but the magnitude of it is pretty amazing – a half a percentage point, from 8.34 to 8.82, and this is in April, when pitch velocities are lower.

Reliever K/9 is already over 9, or a strikeout per inning, and obviously the overall K rate is closing in on 1/IP, and may get there either this year or the next. What would that look like? Well, for a preview, check out the minor leagues. After looking at yet another set of box scores littered with double-digit strikeout totals, I took a look at the league-wide strikeout rates in the full-season leagues this year. They’re up, and yes, it’s the latest point in a steady, upward trend line, but the magnitude of it floored me. Last year, the Texas League K/9 was 7.8 per 9, actually down slightly from the year before. This year, it’s 9.3. The entirety of the league now gets more than a strikeout per inning. How about the Southern League? 9.2, same as the International League. In the pitcher-friendly Midwest League, this trend is pretty advanced, as the league is closing in on a league-wide K/9 of 10 – they’re at 9.8 right now. The California League is at 9.8 too, but at least people hit HRs over there. I’m struggling to convey just how shocking I find this – a full season league has never had a K/9 of 9 before, and now I can only find a couple of leagues with a K/9 UNDER 9 (and just barely).

The M’s affiliates, stocked as they are with minor league free agents, are all over the map in this metric. The Rainiers are 2nd in the league, with a team K/9 near 10. But they’re among the lowest in the Cal League and in the Texas League. Clinton, though…Clinton. The Lumberkings currently have a team K/9 of over 12, and just a single pitcher has a K/9 under 10, some poor kid who’s only K’d 6 in 6 2/3 IP. Does this mean the M’s are bringing up a fireballing class of relief prospects? Not necessarily – if anything, it’s now harder to identify bat-missing that stands out from the crowd, now that seemingly every low-level 6th inning guy gets 12 Ks every 9 IP. A big part of WHY the minors has seen this explosion is that the minors have seen the most comprehensive changes in starter workload. No prospect throws 200 IP anymore, and that means starters are going 3-4-5, maaaaybe 6 IP. There are a lot of innings left over, and those are going to a fleet of relievers schooled in things like how to improve velocity. Teams don’t worry if batting prospects have high K rates as long as they’re effective overall, so there’s nothing countering this trend towards more and more strikeouts.

Is this what we’ll see in the majors in a few years? 200 IP seasons are already an endangered species; will we see a list of ERA qualifiers that’s like 10 names long? Would you care? As an M’s fan, I’d like to figure out where the next competitive advantage is going to come from. What is THIS org going to do better than everyone else, something that can give the team a real, tangible advantage. I keep thinking that they’re already at a disadvantage in this trend, no matter what Clinton’s doing, because teams like the Astros are already so far ahead – and Cleveland’s ahead of Houston in terms of maintaining a true-talent K rate near 25% or 9.5/9 innings. The M’s have attempted to zig while the league zags and get low-BABIP, non-turbocharged strikeout pitchers behind James Paxton, but to date, it hasn’t really worked.

Mike Leake looked like a good candidate for this strategy after he showed an ultra-low walk rate last year and some contact management. As decent as he’s pitched this year, those attributes haven’t been there for him in 2018 – he’s walked more than he’s struck out, and he’s given up some really crushed contact. Why? A part of it may be that his velocity’s down not only from where he was last September, but down by at least 1 MPH across the board from where he was in April of 2017. It’s been very cold, but that’s a worrying trend. He’s throwing his change-up more than he has since 2013, and it’s been fairly effective – but that’s balanced by a decline in the effectiveness of his cutter. That pitch used to take pressure off of his sinker, and give batters a different look, but as he’s shifted from the sinker to the cutter, the results are essentially a mix of the two – there’s no net gain in effectiveness.

Welcome back, Ben Gamel. Ariel Miranda was optioned back to AAA to make room. Consider the can kicked for 5 days; the M’s pitching probable is listed as TBA on Sunday the 22nd, but it kind of looks like Erasmo Ramirez will make that start.

Tied at 2 in the 8th, the Rainiers scored 6 runs to beat Albuquerque 8-2, tatooing Isotopes reliever Austin “Burning Down the” House for all 6 runs. John Andreoli went 2-5 and still has a SLG% above .650. They’ll send Rob Whalen to the mound in tonight’s game.

Arkansas beat Corpus Christi 6-3, despite another great appearance from Hooks pitcher Josh James. James has faced Arkansas in his last two appearances and gone a combined 10 IP, given up no runs on 4 hits with 2 BBs and…16 strikeouts. The Traveleres are off today to, uh, travel.

Clinton edged Burlington 3-2, with L-Kings hurlers striking out 16 Bees, making up for the 13 strikeouts Burlington pitchers racked up in 8 IP of work. 29 strikeouts, 5 total runs, 3 earned, 0 HRs. The 2018 Midwest League, everybody. Sam Delaplane is the K leader of the Lumberkings, as his season line is now at 10 Ks and 1 BB in 4 2/3 IP. Clinton/Burlington was rained out today, which, I suppose is an improvement on being snowed out? Maybe?

The M’s use their 5th starter for the first time tonight, and the timing…could be better. Facing a very good Astros team and an excellent opposing starter, the M’s have to go to the relatively unexciting Ariel Miranda. It’s a good reminder of how important it was to win last night’s game, but also a good test for the M’s offense, and a good yardstick to see how Miranda reacts to last year’s explosion of dingers.

McCullers exemplifies a new generation of pitching strategy, and one that upends what’s come before: McCullers uses 94-95 MPH fastball relatively sparingly, opting instead to throw a blizzard of slurvy curve balls. McCullers’ breaking ball is an elite pitch; for a curveball, it’s got essentially unparalleled velocity, and for a slider, it’s got exceptional vertical bite. It’s thrown from a lower 3/4 arm slot, but is every bit as deadly to lefties as it is to righties. That vertical movement means that when batters DO put it in play (they’re more likely to just whiff), they do so on the ground.

Essentially, McCullers has turned a breaking ball into a change-up/curve hybrid: it elicits the high rate of swings that a good splitter/change does, and the high GB% is common to splitters/change-ups as well…but the whiff rate and horizontal movement are typical of breaking balls. Thrown over 50% of the time, the pitch has the effect of speeding up McCullers’ fastball, and that may be why McCullers generates swings on less than 40% of his fastballs.

It’s a pretty cool trick if you can pull it off, but it’s not clear that McCullers himself is capable. He’s missed plenty of time due to injuries, capped off with a TJ surgery on his elbow. He hit the DL with back issues twice last year, and thus he has a Paxton-esque career high in MLB innings of just 125, set back in 2015.

Miranda’s made two starts thus far, one in Modesto and one in Tacoma. In his 9 IP, he’s walked 5 and K’d 7, but given up 8 runs on 12 hits. On the positive side, he’s yet to allow a HR, and the walks and hits may reflect the fact that he was just working on a particular pitch. It sounds like the M’s may option Miranda back to Tacoma after tonight in order to make room for Ben Gamel, and to give Erasmo Ramirez – who starts tonight for the Rainiers – more time.

Whatever the M’s decide to do, they’re still faced with a number of roster decisions. They made the first of them today when they optioned Taylor Motter back to AAA to make room for Miranda. They could swap out Miranda for Erasmo in a few days, or use Miranda’s roster spot for Gamel and buy a bit of time. At this point, Ichiro’s still on the club, but it’s going to be tough for him to hold that spot with Gamel back in the fold AND once Mike Zunino’s done with his own rehab.

I enjoyed this John Trupin article at LL going over how the M’s have been both lucky and unlucky on the young season. Their pitching staff still rates poorly by most metrics, but it hasn’t hurt their record, while it’s tough to categorize the M’s as the beneficiaries of luck when they’ve lost so many starters to injury. Take joy from the M’s while you can, M’s fans.

There were only 2 MiLB games in the system last night, with Arkansas getting bombed 9-0 by Houston affiliate Corpus Christi in the Texas League, while Modesto was doubled by Stockton 6-3. Mike Zunino went 1-3 with a double in the latter game, catching 5 innings. Evan White had a hit and two walks, so that was his most successful day at the plate this year, but the 1B is still looking for his first extra-base hit of the year.

Tonight’s starters include Oliver Jaskie for Clinton, who leads the L-Kings into a series with Burlington; Chase DeJong in Arkansas, facing Josh James and Corpus Christi; John Richy for Modesto; and Josh Smith as Tacoma kicks off a series against Albuquerque.

The Astros haven’t run away with the division yet, and head into Seattle in a virtual dead heat with the M’s, who are coming off yet another series win. I’ve said before and still believe that the Astros are comprehensively better, top to bottom, but that fact doesn’t actually mean they should just cancel the series and add three wins to the Astros’ total. The M’s need to play really well and hopefully get a bit of luck, but that’s not asking for the impossible.

One thing that makes it a bit easier: the Astros formidable offense is slumping a bit. Similar to the Indians, the Astros are simply underperforming at the plate. They’ve got a decent walk rate, but the two things that made them so great last year – high ISO/power AND elite contact skills – have eroded. Their K rate ranks 17th in the early going, while their ISO is down in 21st place. They were the league’s best in both measures in 2017. Youngsters like Alex Bregman and Derek Fisher haven’t hit their stride yet, while Jose Altuve (while productive over all) hasn’t hit for power. George Springer’s also gotten off to a bit of a slow start, and it’ll be interesting to see if the M’s can keep it that way; he killed the M’s last year, posting an OPS over 1.000 against M’s pitching.

Today’s starter, Dallas Keuchel, hasn’t been himself, either. After years of a walk rate under 6%, he comes into tonight’s game with a rate over 12%. Meanwhile, his K rate has dropped as well, and while he was effective without missing a ton of bats once before, it’s tougher to do now that the ball is supercharged (if it still is; it’s been a weird year). His pitch location’s up slightly compared to last year, but it’s still lower than it was in 2016, so I don’t think he’s doing anything radically different – he’s just not as effective. Thus, tonight’s game – with ace James Paxton on the mound – may be the M’s best chance, and so they’ve got to take advantage. It’s baseball, so momentum is a weird concept, but everything feels different when the team’s coming off a win against a Cy Young winner like Keuchel.

It’d also make me less worried about the rest of the series. The Astros are 10-5 *despite* some mediocre offense because their pitching (Keuchel aside) has been phenomenal. They’ve got the best runs allowed per game mark in the, uh, game, at just over 3. Charlie Morton looks like an ace now, and so do both Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. The bullpen has half a dozen absolutely ridiculous strikeout arms, from Brad Peacock to Chris Devenski to Hector Rondon and even Collin McHugh.

Paxton’s looked quite good in his last two starts, and I’m fine with just forgetting about his initial start of the year, but I’d love to see him run off a string of great starts in front of the Maple Grove. As a team, the M’s have a better K:BB ratio at home, and their low-BABIP plan is working to perfection in a park like Safeco which suppresses BABIP. The problem, and I know you’re sick of hearing me say this, is home runs, or more broadly, really hard contact. Safeco Field has seen the highest percentage of pitches turn into “barrels” – Statcast’s definition of ideal contact – of any park. Sure, you say, that’s because the Mariners play there, and we just had a nice tall glass of A’s bullpen, too. True! But the M’s seem to think Safeco will minimize the impact of hard contact, and that’s just not true anymore.

The M’s pitching staff has plenty of problems, and they lead the league in barrel frequency when they’re on the road. But they give up *even more* at Safeco. From what we’ve seen this year and last, pretty much the only thing that can slow Paxton down is a big HR, and that’s why he’s got to try and limit them against a line-up like Houston’s that can punish mistakes…even if they’ve not done so yet this year. Yes, the K:BB ratio is great, and yes, the M’s are pitching around those dingers, as exemplified by Felix yesterday. But they’re giving up soooo many dingers, and a team that considers itself a playoff contender can’t be neck and neck with the patently-not-a-major-league-staff Cincinnati Reds in this measure. The M’s HR/9 coming into today is 1.74, and that’s without needing a 5th starter *at all* this year.

Motter starts at 1B with Vogelbach on the bench against a tough lefty.

Lots of talk about a steep drop in attendance in baseball this year. The weather has clearly played some role, and game cancellations are up dramatically, but that’s not the only factor. Jeff Passan’s article points to the number of teams “tanking” this year as a potential contributing factor, and the perennial issue of cost came up a lot on twitter. I’m not sure what to think at this point, but I’ll just note that Seattle hasn’t been affected – attendance is pretty solid thus far for the M’s. We’ll see how it stacks up at the end of the year, but they’re 4th in the AL in average attendance.

Christian Bergman continued his hot start yesterday in Sacramento, throwing 5 IP of 1R ball to raise his season ERA to 0.51. Kirk Nieuwenhuis and John Andreoli homered in the R’s 15-5 win – rehabbing Ben Gamel walked 3 times, and should head north in this series.. a move that could come with some tough choices. Tacoma’s game today was rained out.

Arkansas lost to Corpus Christi in 11 innings on 3-run HR from Yordan Alvarez. Andrew Moore struck out *9* in 4 2/3 IP, but gave up 5 runs. Moore’s now struck out 26 in 16 1/3 IP in AA. The new extra inning rules are going to play havoc with reliever numbers, as poor Stephen Perakslis gave up 5 runs for the Travs yesterday…but had the pleasure of starting TWO innings with a runner placed on 2B. Those runners scored in each inning, and were charged to Perakslis. Sure, they’re unearned runs, but the runs are still there, and it’s got to change how you pitch. Arkansas sends Spencer Herrman to the mound tonight against Cuban Cionel Perez of Corpus Christi.

Speaking of extra innings, Modesto lost in 12 4-3. The game was tied at 1 after 9, then both clubs scored their free runner in the 11th, before Visalia scored 2 to the Nuts 1 in the 12th. Randy Bell went 7 IP, giving up 1 R on 3 H and 1 BB (he K’d 2). The Nuts open a series with Stockton today, and they’ll send Ljay Newsome to the hill. Catching him, at least to start off, will be Mike Zunino, who’s starting his rehab assignment. Sounds like he’ll catch 5-6 IP tonight, DH tomorrow, and then catch 8-9 IP the following day.

Clinton was snowed out yesterday, and they’re off today. Lots of bad weather in the midwest this year, with a ton of snow falling in April.